Gary Williams
Gary Williams was born and raised in New Jersey, and he rose to prominence as a basketball coach in Boston and Columbus, Ohio, but he doesn’t associate himself with those places.
“I’m a Maryland person,” the former Terrapins men’s basketball coach said yesterday. “There’s no doubt about that.”
And the Hall of Fame sideline general who helmed the Terps from 1989 to 2011 took another step yesterday toward staying connected with the university when he accepted a senior role overseeing athletics fundraising and leading alumni outreach.
Williams’ official title is senior managing director for alumni relations and athletic development. It’s a new role, so details of his job are still being hashed out. But it’s clear Williams, an alumnus who guided the Terps to their lone national title in 2002, will be actively involved in promoting this university in an official capacity.
Williams “will serve as spokesman for the Alumni Association’s new 25th Anniversary Celebration and help manage the University’s new regional development plan in New York City, Baltimore, Los Angeles and South Florida,” according to a university news release.
The Baltimore Sun reported one of Williams’ projects include raising funds for an indoor football practice facility, which football coach Randy Edsall has been advocating since he arrived in College Park in 2011.
“I like to think of Gary as our new head coach of athletic fundraising and alumni outreach,” university President Wallace Loh said in a statement. “And I’m confident he will have the same level of success off the court as he did on it.”
Williams has served as an athletic department adviser since he retired in 2011, and he remained involved with the university by taking on several projects even before yesterday’s announcement.
He was a co-chair of the university’s Great Expectations capital campaign, which was launched in 2006 and reached its goal of raising $1 billion by December 2012. In his new role, Williams will hope to continue his fundraising success while working with the Division of University Relations, which raised a school-record $142 million last year, and the Alumni Association.
“Our Alumni Association actually began the very same year that Gary Williams arrived on campus as the new head coach in 1989,” Nicole Pollard, the university’s Alumni Association president said in the release. “I can think of no better ambassador for our 25th anniversary, and to help us grow the community of Terps around the globe.”
Williams said he was excited to take on this new role as the Terps embark on their first full year in the Big Ten. Williams coached in the Big Ten at Ohio State in the 1980s for three years before he took the Terps job, and he served as an analyst for the Big Ten Network for a year after he retired from coaching.
“It’s a great chance for the university to go in a little different direction as far as being a member of the Big Ten now,” said Williams, who was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in August. “I have a little bit of a background in the Big Ten.”
Much as he would after games while serving as the Terps coach, Williams said yesterday he’d need to evaluate several things before he got to work implementing changes and taking on projects. He wants to examine the university’s fundraising initiatives, get different departments on the same page and begin to set goals.
Williams, 69, has been plenty busy since he quit drawing up game plans and running Terps’ practices. He’s worked for several media outlets as an analyst and has been involved with a variety of community events.
But the iconic coach has never strayed too far from this university.
“Maryland was very good to me,” Williams said. “It gave me an education, it gave me a chance to play basketball, and then I was a graduate assistant at Maryland: my first job that I had. So whenever you can give back — and I’m in a position to do it — I’m more than happy to.”
